Site Mobile Navigation

Justice Dept. to Critique Interrogation Methods Backed by Bush Team

The Justice Department’s ethics office is in the final stages of a report that sharply criticizes Bush administration lawyers who wrote legal opinions justifying waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, according to department and Congressional officials.

The report, by H. Marshall Jarrett, who leads the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, would be the first accounting for legal advice that endorsed interrogation techniques historically considered by the United States and other Western countries to be illegal torture. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will have to decide whether to approve the findings and whether to make them public.

The report is expected to focus on three former officials of the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department office that advises the executive branch on the interpretation of the law. They are John Yoo, a Berkeley law professor, now a visiting professor at Chapman University, who was the primary author of opinions on torture while at the counsel’s office in 2002; Jay S. Bybee, now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who as head of the office signed the 2002 opinions, which were later withdrawn; and Steven G. Bradbury, who wrote three more still-secret opinions on interrogation in 2005, when he was the top lawyer in the counsel’s office.

Mr. Jarrett’s office completed a draft report late last year, but Michael B. Mukasey, the attorney general at the time, and his deputy, Mark R. Filip, insisted that it not be considered final until written responses from Mr. Yoo, Judge Bybee and Mr. Bradbury could be incorporated. The three are now in the process of submitting their responses, according to an official who agreed to speak about the internal report only on condition of anonymity.

Officials said the report assesses the reasoning used in justifying the harsh methods and pressure from the White House to reach particular conclusions. The Office of Professional Responsibility can refer cases for criminal investigation, but legal experts say a more likely possibility is a referral to bar associations for potential disciplinary action.

Efforts to reach Mr. Yoo, Judge Bybee and Mr. Bradbury on Monday were unsuccessful. In the past, they have defended their opinions as reflecting their honest legal analysis in response to questions from the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House about the legal limits of interrogation of terrorism suspects in the tense months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A Justice Department spokesman, Matthew A. Miller, said the report was “under review” but declined to comment further.

On Monday, after reading an account of the Office of Professional Responsibility report on the Newsweek Web site, two Democratic senators who have closely followed the issue wrote to Mr. Jarrett asking about the status of his investigation.

The senators, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, asked when his report would be completed and whether he had recommended to Mr. Holder that a summary be made public.

The senators wrote that the Justice Department in the Bush administration had given intelligence professionals “legal advice so misguided that it damages America’s image around the world and the Justice Department is forced to repudiate it.”

The first major legal opinion on torture and interrogation was dated Aug. 1, 2002, written mainly by Mr. Yoo and signed by Mr. Bybee. It concluded that a method should be considered illegal torture only if it produced pain equivalent to that caused by organ failure or death.

After Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo left the Justice Department, the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack L. Goldsmith, advised government departments not to rely on that opinion, which was formally withdrawn in June 2004. After the C.I.A. raised further questions about the legality of its interrogation methods, Mr. Bradbury issued new opinions approving harsh methods in 2005.

On his second full day in office, President Obama instructed officials not to rely on any opinions on interrogation issued by the Justice Department since 2001

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Justice Dept. Is Reviewing Interrogation Under Bush. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe